A musical note or tone produced by a musical instrument of string, piano or percussion types is characterized by an envelope having a relatively rapid rise time and a relatively slow, usually exponential, fall or decay time. If an isolated musical note signal of the aforementioned type were recorded, as with a tape recorder, and then played backwards, there would result a highly unusual and pleasing note signal having a slow rise and a rapid decay. Of course, however, music is composed of a sequence of notes and playing a prerecorded musical program backwards would yield the sequence of notes in backwards order.